Elizabeth A. Smart

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Elizabeth Ann Smart (born November 3, 1987) is an American woman who was abducted from her Salt Lake City, Utah bedroom on June 5, 2002 at the age of 14. She was found alive nine months later on March 12, 2003 in Sandy, Utah, about 18 miles from her home, in the company of Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Ileen Barzee, who were indicted for her kidnapping but ruled unfit to stand trial. Her abduction and recovery were widely reported and were the subject of a made-for-TV movie and a published book. She is now a music student at Brigham Young University and a political activist.

[edit] Biography

[edit] Abduction

Ed and Lois Smart, with their six children, resided in the upper middle class neighborhood of Federal Heights in Salt Lake City, Utah.^[1] On the evening of June 4, 2002, the family attended an award ceremony at Elizabeth's school. After the family returned home and got ready for bed, Ed made sure the doors were all locked, but he did not turn on the alarm. "If the children got up and moved (in the night), it would set the alarm off. And so we just said we’re not going to bother with it," Lois later explained.^[2]

In the early hours of the morning, Brian David Mitchell broke into the home and came to the bedroom that Elizabeth shared with her 9-year-old sister, Mary Katherine.^[3] While Mary Katherine pretended to be asleep,^[4] she watched the abduction,^[5] and later gave these hints as to what happened:

• A white man about the height of her brother Charles (5 ft 8 in)^[6] about 30 or 40 years old, wearing light-colored clothes and a golf hat.^[7][8] (He was actually wearing black, did not have a golf hat and was 49.)^[9]
• He had dark hair, and also dark hair on his arms and on the back of his hands.^[8]
• The man threatened Elizabeth with a gun.^[8] (It was actually a knife, but Mary Katherine thought it was a gun.)^[9]
• When Elizabeth said "ouch" after stubbing her toe on a chair, Mitchell said something that sounded like: "You better be quiet, and I won’t hurt you."^[10]
• She heard Elizabeth ask "Why are you doing this?" and though the answer was not clear, Mary Katherine thought the answer might have been "for ransom."^[11][12]
• Mitchell was soft-spoken — even polite, calm, and nicely dressed.^[8]
• Although Mitchell spoke to Elizabeth quietly, Mary Katherine thought Mitchell's voice seemed somehow familiar, but she couldn’t pinpoint where or when she had heard it.^[13]
• She never got a good look at Mitchell's face.^[14] This fact was kept a secret by the police during the investigation.^[15]

By listening to the creaking floor as Elizabeth and Mitchell walked, Mary Katherine thought she could tell where Mitchell and Elizabeth were, so when it seemed safe she hopped out of bed to tell her parents, but froze in terror when she nearly ran into Mitchell and Elizabeth as they seemed to be looking into her brothers' bedroom.^[16] Fearful that she had been spotted by the abductor, she crept back into her bed. "I thought, you know, be quiet, because if he hears you, he might take you too, and you're the only person who has seen this," Mary Katherine said in a later interview. "I was, like, shaking."^[9] She hid for an undetermined amount of time. Investigators later concluded that she may have been hiding over two hours before she felt safe enough to come out.^[17]

Just before 4 a.m., Mary Katherine came to her parents' bedroom and woke them up. She told them Elizabeth was gone, but her parents thought she was having a bad dream. Ed went from room to room, and didn’t find her. Mary Katherine told him, "You’re not going to find her. A man took her. A man took her with a gun."^[18] Still, the parents found this hard to believe until Lois spotted a screen window downstairs that had been cut with a knife.^[19] They immediately began contacting authorities, neighbors, family, and friends. The neighborhood was searched thoroughly and many of the neighbors were immediately there to help.^[20] Although this caused some problems with crime scene contamination, it was not considered a major cause for problems in the investigation.^[21] One of their neighbors who came to help was Jake Garn, a retired United States senator.^[22]

That morning, Ed went on television and asked the kidnapper to return his daughter.^[23] A massive search for Elizabeth began.^[24]

[edit] Search and investigation

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A massive community search effort, organized by the Laura Recovery Center, was very involved, looked for Elizabeth in the days immediately following her abduction. Up to 2,000 volunteers a day were dispatched to the area surrounding her home trying to find any trace of the missing girl. Word spread quickly as an impromptu coalition of websites facilitated the distribution of information about Elizabeth Smart with pre-formatted flyers that could be downloaded for printing or immediately circulated online by email or Internet fax. Volunteers combed the hills near her family's home and extended the search using search dogs and aircraft. After many days of intensive searching, the community-led search was closed by the local volunteers and efforts were directed to other means of finding Elizabeth.

Although police had an eyewitness, Mary Katherine's report was not very helpful to investigators. Furthermore, there was almost no significant forensic evidence such as clear fingerprints or DNA samples to help identify the abductor, hindering the investigation. For reasons unclear, a search using bloodhound dogs was unsuccessful in following Mitchell and Elizabeth's path on foot. Police questioned and interviewed hundreds of potential suspects including one individual, Bret Michael Edmunds, a 26-year-old drifter who was pursued across the country but ultimately was cleared of suspicion in the case after being located in a West Virginia hospital suffering from a drug overdose. One by one, the leads that were pursued often put at-large criminals back in prison, but they did not produce the desired result of finding Elizabeth. Ultimately, the Salt Lake City police signaled that their prime person of interest was Richard Ricci, being held in custody for unrelated reasons. Ricci, a handyman hired by the Smarts, was on parole for a 1983 attempted murder of police officer Mike Hill. He was charged with felony burglaries of homes in the area similar in circumstances to the break-in at the Smarts. Ricci later died in jail from a brain hemorrhage a few weeks after he refused to provide a confession to Utah corrections officers. With his death, it seemed that all leads were exhausted.

The Smarts and their extended family persistently maintained a presence in the local and national media, in order to keep Elizabeth's name in the press, providing the media with home videos of her as both a teenager and as a child, and created a website to serve as a resource center.

After many months, a breakthrough came in October 2002, when Mary Katherine was cleaning her room, and suddenly remembered where she had heard Mitchell's voice, of which she informed her parents.^[25]

The Smarts sought to help unemployed people in the community by paying them for odd jobs or handy work around the property.^[26] Mary Katherine now identified Mitchell as a man who had worked in the home for one day in November 2001, but who went by the name "Emmanuel." Lois and some of the children had met him downtown as he was asking for spare change. He was clean, soft-spoken, well-groomed, Caucasian, 5’8" tall, had dark hair, and was "about 45 years old". It seemed clear^{[citation needed]} that "Emmanuel" was not his real name, but had something to do with his self-proclaimed calling as a minister to the homeless. He worked at the Smarts' home for five hours, helping on the roof and raking leaves. While they worked together on Ed's roof, he told Ed that he was traveling to different cities preaching to the homeless.^{[27][28][29][30]}

When this was reported to the police, they had doubts as to its reliability. Mary Katherine had barely heard the suspect's voice, for only a few minutes, in a whisper, several months previously, and after coming out of a sleep. That she suddenly remembered it as the voice of a man she had met for a few moments a year earlier was not seen as a trustworthy lead.

Tensions developed as the parents accused the police of not thoroughly following up on this lead. The family used the services of a sketch artist to draw "Emmanuel"'s face from memory. In February, this drawing was released to the media, with the assistance of John Walsh, who revealed it in an appearance on Larry King Live and on his own series, America's Most Wanted. The drawing was recognized by Emmanuel's family, who reported his actual name, Brian David Mitchell, to the police, and provided them with contemporary photographs of Mitchell.

On March 12, 2003, just over nine months after the abduction, Mitchell, who was now wanted by police for questioning, was spotted traveling with two companions in Sandy, Utah by an elderly couple who had heard of the kidnapping on America's Most Wanted the night before, and alerted police. The companions were Elizabeth Smart — disguised in a grey wig, sunglasses, and veil — and Wanda Ileen Barzee. Smart was finally recognized by the officers during questioning, and was promptly reunited with her family. Mitchell and Barzee were taken into custody as suspected kidnappers.

Mitchell was a polygamist who believed it was his religious right to have more than one wife, even by force.

[edit] Legal proceedings

Brian David Mitchell (born October 18, 1953) and his wife, Wanda Ileen Barzee, were indicted by a Utah grand jury. His trial on these charges has been postponed indefinitely, following a court ruling that he is not mentally competent to stand trial.

For several months, Mitchell and Barzee were held on $10 million bond awaiting the outcome of mental competency tests. Prosecutors said that Mitchell and Barzee kidnapped Elizabeth to be Mitchell's "second wife",^{[citation needed]} held her against her will in the foothills near Federal Heights until October 8,^{[citation needed]} and then took her to California, where they stayed until March 5.^{[citation needed]}

In January 2004, Barzee was found incompetent to stand trial on charges including kidnapping, sexual assault, and burglary. On July 26, 2005, Mitchell was also found incompetent to stand trial, facing the same charges. A district judge has ordered him held until he is deemed fit for trial.^[31][32] Barzee's condition has not improved since she was found incompetent to stand trial. Barzee has also refused "to take medication that might restore her mental competence."^[33][34]

In February 2006, a bill went before the Utah legislature to allow prosecutors to apply for forcible medication of defendants to restore their competence to face trial. Permission to forcibly medicate Wanda Barzee was also sought, relying upon the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 Sell decision, which permits compulsory medication when the state can demonstrate a compelling interest is served by restoring a person's competence and that medication would not harm the individual or prevent them from defending themselves. In June 2006, a Utah judge approved the forcible medication of Barzee so that she could stand trial.

On Monday, December 18, 2006, Mitchell was again declared unfit to stand trial after screaming at a judge, during a hearing, to "forsake those robes and kneel in the dust." Doctors have been trying to treat Mitchell without drugs, but prosecutor Kent Morgan said after Monday's scene in court that a request was likely to be made for permission to forcibly administer drugs.

[edit] Media

[edit] Television interviews

In October 2003, Elizabeth Smart and her parents were interviewed for a special segment of Dateline NBC. The interview, conducted by the Today show's Katie Couric, featured Elizabeth's first interview with any media outlet. Couric questioned Elizabeth's parents about their experiences while Elizabeth was missing, including the Smarts' personal opinions concerning Elizabeth's captors. Couric then interviewed Elizabeth about school and her life following her kidnapping.

Shortly after the Dateline interview, Elizabeth Smart and her family were featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where Winfrey questioned the Smarts about the kidnapping. One detail she disclosed is that Mitchell forced her to keep a diary and to write in it daily. She knew he would read the entries she made, so she wrote such things as: "I like it here. They are nice to me." But below the entries in English, she wrote in French things such as: "I hate it here. I hate them. I want to be back with my family."

She also revealed that after her experience, she has more compassion for the homeless. Asked if she felt sorry for her captors, she stated that she was not referring to them and that they were homeless by choice and she had no compassion for their condition or what they did to her. But she went on to say, "It's hard to be cold. It's hard to not have enough to eat."

[edit] Book and film

The Smart family published a book, Bringing Elizabeth Home, which was used as the basis of the television movie The Elizabeth Smart Story that aired November 9, 2003 on CBS. The Smarts claimed they wanted to avoid subjecting their daughter to the limelight, but that after realizing it was inevitable, they decided it would be preferable to allow a film authorized by them to be created, rather than allowing an unauthorized version to surface.^{[citation needed]}

A lawyer for Mitchell said the national broadcast of the television film would further delay justice and considered filing a motion. The piece characterizes Mitchell and Barzee as deranged religious zealots, and provides no background on either of them. A small but detailed section of the book Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer describes Mitchell and his kidnapping of Smart in the larger context of Mormon fundamentalism. Elizabeth's uncle, Tom Smart, wrote a book called In Plain Sight: The Startling Truth Behind the Elizabeth Smart Investigation criticizing the investigation process by the Salt Lake City Police Department, as well as the media influences that led to her recovery.^[35]

[edit] Post-abduction life and political activism

On March 9, 2006, Smart went to Congress to support Sexual Predator Legislation, and on July 26, 2006 she spoke after the signing of the Adam Walsh Act.

She currently works as a bank clerk and is a junior at Brigham Young University studying music, where she plays the harp. In May 2008, she travelled to Washington, D.C. where she helped introduce a pamphlet the U.S. Department of Justice asked her to contribute to.^[36][37]

[edit] Interview with Nancy Grace

On July 19, 2006, CNN's Nancy Grace interviewed Elizabeth Smart, who appeared on behalf of a bill requiring sex offenders to register with their state of residence. Despite Smart's objection, Grace asked Smart a long series of questions about her abduction, such as "Did you ever hear people calling out your name?" "Did your kidnappers threaten you?" and "How did you see out of that thing?" (referring to the burka Mitchell had forced her to wear). Although Elizabeth stated after several such questions, "You know, I really am here to support the bill and not to go into what, you know, what happened to me - what, the whole, like, what is in my past because I'm not here to give an interview on that, I'm here to help push this bill through", Grace relented only when Smart, clearly upset, said, "I'm really not gonna talk about this at this time. That's something I just don't even look back at — I really—I really—to be frankly honest, I really don't appreciate you bringing all this up." Grace responded by saying "I'm sorry dear, I thought that you would speak out to other victims, but you know what? I completely understand. A lot of victims... don't want to talk about it, and don't feel like talking about it."^[38][39][40] Many in the media and public condemned Grace for her interview and remarks.

[edit] References

• Smart, Ed and Smart, Lois. Bringing Elizabeth Home: A Journey of Faith and Hope (2003). U.S.: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-51214-7 (U.S.).
• Haberman, Maggie and MacIntosh, Jeane. Held Captive: The Kidnapping and Rescue of Elizabeth Smart (2003). U.S.: Avon. ISBN 0-06-058020-8 (U.S.).
• Smart, Tom and Benson, Lee. In Plain Sight: The Startling Truth Behind the Elizabeth Smart Investigation (2005). U.S.: Chicago Review Press. ISBN 1-55652-579-6 (U.S.).

[edit] Notes